The engine of New Zealand agriculture. A tiny immigrant that became indispensable. Small, fuzzy and golden-brown, honey bees live in highly organised colonies of up to 60,000 individuals. Every bee has a role. Scouts find the flowers. Foragers collect nectar and pollen. Nurses feed the young. Guards protect the hive. A society of 60,000, all working together. Their communication is a marvel of nature. The famous waggle dance tells their sisters exactly where to find the best food sources, encoding distance and direction in a series of movements. They are responsible for pollinating billions of dollars worth of crops annually, from kiwifruit and apples to clover seed. A dance that feeds the nation. Without them, the face of New Zealand farming would change drastically. They also produce honey, wax and propolis, resources harvested by humans for thousands of years. The iconic mānuka honey, unique to New Zealand, is a global superfood derived from the nectar of the mānuka bush, processed by these tireless workers. However, their success comes with caveats. As an introduced species, they compete with native pollinators like native bees and hoverflies for limited floral resources. They can also spread diseases to wild populations. Yet, for most New Zealanders, the hum of the honey bee is the sound of summer itself, a comforting backdrop to life in the garden. They are the ultimate immigrants, having found a new home and become indispensable to their hosts. The honey bee was welcomed by Māori as a provider of a new kind of sweetness. The garden is warm. The bees hum, dancing their waggle dance, flying from flower to flower. They do not know they are immigrants. They do not know they are indispensable. They just collect nectar. That is what bees do.